


but it’s as warm as saxophones and honey in the sun for you

by buttface



Series: cabaletta [5]
Category: Show By Rock!! - All Media Types
Genre: Exes, Hair Washing, Late Night Conversations, Laundry, M/M, POV Second Person, POV Second Person: Rom, Rain, Scents & Smells, Showers, Smoking, canon-typical furry, the excruciatingly slow crumbling of denial about your own feelings, the looming spectre of unspecified death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-20
Updated: 2020-10-20
Packaged: 2021-03-09 05:55:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,837
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27119176
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/buttface/pseuds/buttface
Summary: Haircare, the echoes of youthful domesticity, and Rom never quite able to catch up to what Shuu is running from.*It’s raining again tonight. None of the drama and wonder and catharsis of a thunderstorm, just a dark gray endless drip drip drip that smells of earthworms and wet ash and getting your heart broken next to the trash cans behind a dingy nightclub.It’s late even for you when Shuu shows up at your door, soaking wet and stinking of cigarettes, as if drawn to the scent of your memories.
Relationships: Rom/Shu Zo (Show By Rock!!)
Series: cabaletta [5]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1688323
Kudos: 8





	but it’s as warm as saxophones and honey in the sun for you

**Author's Note:**

> Rated Teen for vague reference to hookups they have previously had.
> 
> This was originally going to be something short and cute and then Shuuzo casually walked into the last scz band episode with a baseball bat of portent and wrecked my shit while completely failing to wreck Rom's. I don't really know how much I want to commit to his whole Looming Mortality *thing* but you know me, I'm a sucker for drama.
> 
> Title is Camera Obscura again, the counterpart to "I wish my heart was as cold as the morning dew".
> 
> I'm not here to shame anybody for smoking, just please take good care of your laundry.

It’s raining again tonight. None of the drama and wonder and catharsis of a thunderstorm, just a dark gray endless drip drip drip that smells of earthworms and wet cigarette ash and getting your heart broken next to the trash cans behind a dingy nightclub.

You can’t actually smell any of that from here, of course, not even with the window cracked. You smell the traces of coffee in your unwashed mug and the remaining half of the can of beer you cracked open when the drops started to fall and the dwindling possibility of not having overtime tomorrow to catch up on all the work you aren’t getting done tonight. But you don’t need your nose to know what rain smells like. That hasn’t changed in years.

It’s late even for you when Shuu shows up at your door, soaking wet and stinking of cigarettes, as if drawn to the scent of your memories. 

You expect him to say something mysterious or cruel when you open the door, but he just looks at you. You don’t recognize that look. 

He always smoked when he had trouble with lyrics, smoked and picked fights. Never drank anywhere near as much as you, said it gummed up his throat, as if smoking was any better. You used to bum smokes off him too from time to time, when he seemed like he needed the company, but it’s not like you ever had a voice or good skin you needed to preserve. He always had more to risk.

You quit pretty fast when he was gone. You couldn’t smell a cigarette anymore without thinking of him. (You still can’t, which has been a bit of a liability as a musician who tends to play in bars.) If you had any withdrawal symptoms, they were buried under all the other things you were feeling.

Surely Judas must have people to stop him doing this kind of thing. Surely it’s a brand liability if someone snaps a photo of him like this, and he’s bound to be breaking some provision of his contract. Obviously he’s pretty good at slipping his handlers, you’ve got a nearly-empty bottle of lube and some incriminating hairs in your vacuum’s filter to attest to that, but that’s different. Where does he go to smoke? How long has he been standing in the rain to be dripping wet like that? At least if he was in your bed instead he’d be warm and dry.

Why has he come here to you after all this time? Why does it always have to be you?

“Got a light?” he asks after a moment.

“I don’t smoke anymore,” you tell him.

“Such a goody two shoes. No wonder your band’s not charting, people can smell the boring salaryman just pouring off of you.”

And there it is, the second half of his cure for creative block. He always said he wrote best the day after you’d had a fight. 

(He used to be a lot better at it. He still has a raw natural talent for getting under your skin, but there’s nothing like spending all your time together to teach you precisely how to make someone angry.)

“At least come inside,” you tell him. When he doesn’t move, you take him firmly by the wrist and pull him through your doorway.

“Can’t resist me, huh?” he teases, dripping across the threshold. 

“You smell like a wet trash fire.”

He shrugs out of your grip with a laugh as you shut the door behind him. “Why, Rom. Anyone would think you don’t want me here.”

You don’t. Do you? He’s put you in an impossible position. You don’t want to put up with whatever it is he’s doing here, but you don’t want him to be out there in the rain anymore, either. 

Have you ever just had a normal, peaceful time with him? You must have, once, or you thought you were anyway. All those memories have an asterisk hovering over them now.

This is why you can’t be together again (he hasn’t asked; are you waiting for him to ask?). You will always wonder what’s going on below the surface now, what his true plans are. You want to believe what he always talks about, that Shuu☆Zo is someone who wants to make people happy. It doesn’t feel quite so far from those moments of Shuu the dreamer. But you can’t forget just how good he is at hurting you.

And yet, he doesn’t seem to be trying his hardest right now, for all that. For all that he’s dropped his voice down into its old register and turned off the sparkle and stares at you with those lidded eyes. You know he can hurt you more than this without breaking a sweat. It’s as if his heart isn’t in it.

“I’m just bringing your home a nostalgic ambiance,” he says, with a deniable touch of emphasis on “your”, sniffing dramatically at his own damp, smoky sleeve. He isn’t wearing one of his stage costumes for once, but he’s still hidden in multiple thick layers, all now soaking wet and dripping the smell of cheap cigarettes onto your living room floor. You suspect they weigh more than he does these days.

“Aren’t you the one who always says you don’t like people being hung up on the past?”

“You read my magazine profiles? How _sweet_. Who’s hung up on the past now?”

“It wasn’t my idea for you to show up at my front door. Nor was it my idea for you to chainsmoke in the rain like a sulky teenager. Those things will kill you, you know.”

You don’t like the sound of the laugh he makes at that.

You used to be the one who kept him from doing this kind of thing. You were the one who tried to get him to sleep when he would rather chainsmoke and chug energy drinks and shout angrily at his scribbled page of half-written lyrics. Even if it meant you had to wear him out first. You were the only one who could ever talk him down.

It’s not your responsibility anymore, but you can’t help feeling like you failed him.

You don’t want this for him. What’s the point if he sacrificed you just to be miserable?

“Aren’t you embarrassed to be seen like this?” 

“You’re the only one who’s ever seen me like this. You should be flattered.”

You make a face. “If you’re going to be here, at least take a shower. Can’t you at least afford a nicer brand of smokes? You smell worse than your branded cologne.”

"Oh Rom, all your insults say more about you than they do about me. What's the matter? Spending all your time cooped up in the office hasn't made you lose your touch already, has it? Come on, take a swing. Don’t you think you can catch me?”

“I’m not going to fight you tonight, Shuu.”

You mean it. You don’t want to fight him. Not like then. It feels too intimate. 

You’re sure if you saw any of your bandmates in a relationship like the one you used to have, you’d sit them down for a conversation about how love doesn’t mean never fighting but it probably shouldn’t mean _always_ fighting. But, well, there’s a reason you still express affection through violence. 

You fought because it mattered, because your creative ideas were better for having clashed against each other until they lost their rough edges, because you were too excited to stand still, because you just liked to touch each other and hear the passion in each other’s voices. You fought probably too much and sometimes out of anger but also always out of affection. In the end you were on the same side, you thought.

But you weren’t then, it turned out, and you certainly aren’t now. If you fought now, it would be something else. Maybe nostalgia, maybe real hatred. Either way it doesn’t sound like a very grown up way to spend your evening.

He steps forward and runs a finger up the front of your shirt, continuing upwards to brush delicately under your chin. ”We don’t have to _fight_.”

“I’m not going to fuck you either, Shuu.”

You mean that, too. He can usually seduce you so easily, but it’s usually only your own heart you have to worry about. You already have a pretty good idea how much punishment it can take. It’s different when it’s him that seems breakable for a change.

He leans in close, slinging an arm over your shoulder (and dripping all over your shirt in the process). “Oh, I think I can change your mind about that --”

\-- which shifts his center of gravity enough for you to knock his feet out from under him and manhandle him into a princess carry. He really must be having a bad night, you never used to be able to catch him off guard that easily.

He seems embarrassed enough to comply, at least, and lets you carry him across the apartment with only moderate tail-swishing. You nudge the door open to the shower room with your foot and deposit him unceremoniously inside. “Now. Are you going to behave yourself and get cleaned off and warmed up?”

“Or what?” Why couldn’t he be keeping up the perfect idol act now? You haven’t seen him sulk like this in years.

“Or I’m going to lock you in here and call Judas.”

“You wouldn’t.”

“I’m an upstanding member of society now. There’s no telling what I might do.”

“You play dirty. All right. I’ll be good.”

“Finally. Hurry up and give me your clothes.”

“Oh? Changed your mind already?” he leers.

“Hurry up and give me your clothes so that I can put them in the wash so that we don’t both smell like an ashtray left out in the rain all night.” You turn around prudishly and after longer than is strictly necessary (but not long enough to get you to break and look back at him) you feel his wet clothing in your outstretched hand.

After satisfying yourself that he’s actually running the shower, you leave him to it. You’ll have to get some air freshener tomorrow for the living room, but it’s mostly fine. Once you wouldn’t have minded, but the smell of cigarette smoke tends to linger like an unwelcome memory. You don’t need it hanging around distracting you.

God, he’s exasperating. You could do a hundred pushups with this frustrated energy, but it wouldn’t do anything to solve the fundamental problem of him.

Thankfully he was wearing his disguise clothes, which are _normal_ and have care labels that confirm you can put them in your washing machine along with your shirt. You know he has a discreet dry cleaner for his elaborate idol outfits - you’ve been the cause of more than one visit - but that would have meant letting it hang around, damp and reeking, until daylight at least. This way you can just put everything in the washer/dryer and delegate at least one of your problems.

Is your regular detergent going to be enough to deal with this? You cast your memory back to the last time you had to do this for him, years ago. Lemon juice, that’s it. Or vinegar, but he just complained it made him smell like a salad. You keep a bottle in the fridge for cooking or the occasional whisky sour, so it’s easy to add a generous helping into the wash before starting it.

Of course, the smell will cling to his wet fur just as badly as it will to his clothes.

Fine, there’s no getting around it. You need to bring him a clean towel anyway, you might as well go back in there with the lemon juice. You make sure to grab only the second-fluffiest towel from the cabinet, though, so he doesn’t start getting ideas.

God knows what he’s been doing in there while you were busy, as he doesn’t look any cleaner. You never knew it was possible to sparkle and leer at the same time before he came crashing back into your life. “Second thoughts?”

“I brought you lemon juice. Thought you might need a little more help making yourself presentable to the agency after the night you’ve apparently had.”

“Hmhmhmmmm.” He sparkles at you some more and puts on his best Shuu☆Zo expression. “Won’t you help me to shine?”

For such a control freak, he always loved for you to wash his hair for him. You used to spend ages in there with him, carefully combing through his hair and tail and scrunching your fingers through it while he hummed happily; that’s why you made him pay the water bills. He hasn’t asked you for it in a long time.

You’re not letting go of your dignity for the galaxy prince act, at least. “Try again.”

He drops that face and picks an old classic, narrowed eyes, mouth somewhere between a scowl and a pout, slouching a little. “If you want that shit in my fur, you’re going to have to put it there yourself.”

It’s not quite a convincing imitation of the old Shuu. It seems to take him effort to swear now. Whatever Judas employee managed to train that foul mouth out of him deserves a promotion.

Well, that’s fine. Good enough.

Getting into the shower yourself feels too much like admitting defeat, but you can stick your head and arms past the curtain without getting too wet. You can see him contemplating staying just out of reach for a moment before he acquiesces to leaning his head into your hands. 

His hair’s wet and shower-warm and softer between your fingers than it ever used to be. You think it might be a little thinner than it was, but they say hair changes every few years, don’t they? Maybe it was just time. You squirt some shampoo into your palm and mix the lemon juice thoroughly into it before applying it to his hair, running your hands through and through.

“Don’t bleach out my streaks,” he murmurs, but there’s no bite in it. “You know how long those take me.”

“Maybe it’ll teach you something.” Your voice is softer than you expect, too. Probably just the water absorbing sound.

His dark roots peeking out under the blond leaves you unexpectedly weak in the knees for a moment. You can only see it when you run your hands all the way through and out, your long nails leaving furrows. It’s not quite time to get them touched up, but it must be soon. Maybe the lemon juice will lighten things a little, buy him some time.

You work the shampoo into a lather to cover it all up.

The sight of your hand raking through his hair and his eyes closed in bliss brings up memories that weren’t quite what you were going for tonight. He’s not the only one still playing out the same role over and over, is he? You aren’t going to let him seduce you tonight, but even when he isn’t actively trying, your mind fills in the rest.

Is tonight the first time you’ve interacted with him in a non-sexual way since you first took him home as Shuu☆Zo? Though right now this barely feels like it qualifies. But he behaves himself while your hands are in his hair, and you don’t glance to see what other effects it might be having, because that knowledge would do you no good.

You get him to turn around so you can lather up his tail while he rinses his hair off. You know from experience that his tail is thick enough to hold smoke for a very long time, so you take your time working the lemon juice into the fur, combing it through with your fingers. It doesn’t help that he’s slowly swishing his tail back and forth under your hands, flicking lemon-scented suds into your eyes.

It takes as long as you remember, but you’re finally satisfied that he’s as clean as he’s going to get. He doesn’t smell like an old ashtray anymore, at least, and he seems less agitated. And less agitating.

You leave the second-fluffiest towel folded by the shower and go to find some spare clothes for him. Even the brightest star idol in the galaxy can handle a night in some monochrome boxer shorts and a T-shirt. You’re tempted to open up the box of overstock Shingancrimsonz T-shirts that you somehow ended up responsible for storing, but that’s probably too aggressive for tonight. You don’t have the energy to watch him rise to the bait.

You settle on a shirt slightly too small for you, a freebie left over from a festival much too small for a band like Trichronika. It was a good show, all the same. It’s always worth showing up and putting in the work. You never know what it will get you; in this case, it got you a shirt that won’t completely swamp Shuu.

Better get a shirt for yourself, too. You usually sleep in just your boxers, but it doesn’t feel right tonight.

He seems a little calmer when he finally leaves the bathroom dressed in your clothes, tail cocooned in your towel. “You’re staying over tonight,” you inform him when he finds you carrying an old futon into the bedroom. You haven’t used it since those days, when all four of you would fall asleep at first light on whatever empty surface you could find. You’ve been airing it out from time to time all these years, in case of _something_ , even after saving up for a decent bed to cushion your overworked back. 

You can see him consider insisting that he’s going home, but even he must know how ridiculous that would be. You don’t like it any more than he does, but you’re not letting him go out and get himself and potentially you into trouble. “You don’t need to get out the futon for me, you know.”

“The futon is for me. You’re sleeping in the bed. So don’t give me any crap about how you’re used to better things than this now.”

He scowls, but his heart doesn’t seem to be in fighting with you anymore. He sits down on the bed without even trying to seduce you, just fidgets restlessly with the towel on his wet tail, trying to get as much moisture out of it as he can.

It would be nice to look after him from closer. But who knows what would happen if you got in that bed next to him tonight. You fight? You fuck? You fall asleep holding him? There’s really no possible outcome that ends well for you.

You can at least help him with his wet hair. It won’t do you any good for him to leave a big wet patch in your bed.

You never use a hair dryer yourself, of course; your hair dries on the commute, and your tail fur is short enough to be dry almost before you’re out the door. But not everyone can be so low maintenance. So you’ve still got one tucked in the back of a cupboard in the other room, where you put everything you don’t want to accidentally see on a bad day.

The laundry’s finished by now, too, so you take a moment to fold the clothes, stalling to catch your breath before going back in there. He’s so good at pushing you and now he’s sleeping in your bed tonight, just like you said he never would again. But even though you always suspect him of being up to something, you can’t quite convince yourself that he’s just doing this to mess with you. 

He’s done such a thorough job of leaving Shuu behind; he wouldn’t backslide like this just for you.

As you return to the bedroom with the hair dryer and comb, you hear him humming a tune to himself, over and over, as if he’s not sure how it ends. He stops when he catches your eye and straightens up, shoulders back, a faux oblivious smile on his face. 

You can’t really hold a conversation while you’re drying the hair on his head; neither of you can hear the other over the noise of the dryer. Sitting behind him like this, unable to see his face, feels much safer. All you have to do is let your body go through the old practiced motions, combing his hair out and blowing the air up from underneath to create volume. All the things he taught you back when he was first trying to create an image for himself. Good thing he’s barely changed his cut since then.

His tail takes longer. There’s always so much of it, you have to section it with the comb and spread each section out to make any progress. It fluffs out as it dries, no matter how much you try to keep it flat. His hair’s always been as stubborn as he is.

He sits surprisingly quietly through all of this. You’d expected him to taunt you some more while he had you captive, but the only sound is the whirring of the dryer and the sound of cars splashing through the puddles outside.

You decide to break the silence yourself, so that at least you’ll have the element of surprise on your side. “How’s the new song coming along?”

You can see the fur on his tail bristle, despite how long it is. “I’m sure I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

“Oh? Just a coincidence you’re doing all the things you used to do when you had writer’s block?”

He turns his head to glare at you. The effect is rather blunted by the soft warmth of his bangs framing his face and your t-shirt sliding off his shoulder.

“This can’t be the only time you’ve had a hard time with a song. You act like this every time?”

“How would you feel if you had to do the polite submissive office worker act all day every day? You need an outlet for the other parts of your personality that you can’t show at work. So do I. You have your band, and I have … you, mostly.”

Surely you should have been let off that responsibility after he ditched you. And yet, here you are. “Starting to regret the idol life, are you?”

“Never. I love it. I love being Shuu☆Zo. But Shuu☆Zo doesn’t get frustrated. Shuu☆Zo never runs out of ideas or needs a quiet place to think. Shuu☆Zo is a role model, an inspiration, a beam of hope for everyone who feels alone or unloved. ” You watch him stretch his hand out towards the light, spread fingers silhouetted like a star. “Sometimes I need to step outside it and catch my breath.”

“By chainsmoking in the rain.”

“I was curious if it still worked.”

“Did it?”

He grins back at you. “Got me into your bedroom, didn’t it?”

You yank the comb a little harder through a knot than is entirely necessary and he swats at your hand.

“No, it didn’t. Are you happy?” He sighs. “For all my exercise and careful diet I’m not as young as I was. It just made me feel old and sorry and I don’t have time for that.”

When’s the last time he admitted to a mistake? Has he _ever_ admitted to a mistake? You savor the moment as you finish combing the last section of his tail. The lemon scent lingers, but the smoke seems to be diminished to the level of plausible deniability. That’s one point to you and your resourcefulness.

You go to put away the hair stuff and when you come back he’s still staring into space, humming absently. “Look, I’m sure you’ll have another interchangeable nonthreatening pop hit soon enough.”

He laughs somewhere between Shuu and Shuu☆Zo. “Call them that if it makes you feel better. I’m keeping up my end of the promise. What’s taking yours so long?”

“Don’t blame me for this.”

He tilts his head. There’s that look again, the one you don’t recognize. “That’s not it. I told you before, I’m impatient.”

This again. “What do you want me to do about it? Even if I _was_ willing to let go of my principles, we don’t all have big producers ready to put together a group for us and get us on every station at the drop of a hat.”

“ _I_ picked my bandmates. I could put in a word for you, too. We could do a side project together.”

“Don’t use me as an excuse to ditch your band.”

“Rom!” He sounds genuinely hurt. You feel a little bad, though you’d never admit it. “I would _never_. The twins are precious and irreplaceable.” He pauses and adds, quieter, “I _have_ learned, you know.”

“Then don’t suggest things you know I’m not going to take you up on. Do you just enjoy hearing me say no?”

“Hmm. Maybe I do.” He sighs and stretches gracefully. You could almost forget he’d turned up on your doorstep looking like a used dishrag. “Nevertheless. I would appreciate it if you didn’t keep taking your sweet-ass time about it.”

“What do you care so much? Don’t you have enough challengers for the number one spot to worry about? We’ll get there and dethrone _whoever_ when we’re good and ready.”

He gives you another genuinely hurt look, but doesn’t say anything. You start to feel like he’s the only one of you who can successfully pull his punches, but it’s hard to manage not to hit his weak spots when he seems to have rearranged them.

A tense silence settles over the both of you. It makes you antsy, and you get up and channel your nervous energy into rearranging the futon, hoping he can’t tell that you’re trying to make sure you’ll still be able to see him even lying down. He politely looks away, fingers tapping out a rhythm on his knees instead.

“You really don’t understand, do you?” he asks suddenly.

You sigh. “You could just _tell_ me things, you know. Before they blow up in both of our faces.”

He looks over at you with a small, tired smile. “You think I should have just told you back then that Amatelast wasn’t enough for me anymore?” 

“Yes, I _do_. We could have … We could have done _something_. It didn’t have to be like that.” _You could have let me help_ , you don’t say. _You could have trusted me; you could have let me be useful to you. Could I have been enough to be useful to you?_ You don’t want to know the answer to that. You’ve learned so much about being in a band since then, you hope.

“Maybe. You know me, though. I only know how to do things with maximum drama. I just had to find the career where it was a life skill. Can you imagine me working a desk job?”

Every time he says this you try to picture it, and every time it’s horrifying. He’s got the nosiness and the willingness to work long hours, but the idea of Shuu being willing to subordinate his desires to someone else’s enough to work in an office… You’ve seen him stock shelves and work the register and all that, of course, but those were all temporary. He’s willing to do straightforward tasks for the promise of a biweekly paycheck to buy more fabric and CDs with, so long as nobody expects him to have a smile on his face doing it; but ask him to pretend to care about the well-being of the company or work a job that he can’t do while thinking up lyrics and he’d be out the door.

Maybe you are a little jealous. God knows your company doesn’t deserve how much of your life you give it. But you’re proud of being able to bear it and keep giving it your best. You’re proud of being willing to work hard, even if it doesn’t benefit you directly. And every experience makes your music richer, after all. He used to know that.

You don’t much feel like having that argument with him tonight, though. Not when you’re more concerned about his well being. “Have you ever considered finding passion that doesn’t destroy you in the process?”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean whatever’s gotten into you tonight. Whatever it is you’re being secretive about. You wouldn’t let the twins get into this kind of state, would you? You’d stop them before they ever picked up the first cigarette. You’d probably stop them if they looked the wrong way at a strong cup of coffee.”

You don’t really know much for sure about his relationship with his new bandmates, but you’ve seen them interact, even if it was just for a few minutes. He radiates protectiveness around them in a way you’ve never seen from him before. Like he has grown up a bit, too, even if he never lets you see it.

“Just consider offering yourself the same advice once in a while. Maybe not everything has to be so apocalyptic. We aren’t teenagers anymore.” (You offer a silent apology to Crow, who _is_ a teenager and has an excuse for describing everything as an apocalypse.)

He opens his mouth to say something, then closes it again and looks away.

You’re getting soppy. It must be the sound of the rain hitting the windows, it’s pushed you through anger all the way to softheartedness. That must be what makes you say it.

“Look. I don’t know what’s going on in your head these days. I don’t know what your life is like. I don’t know anything about you anymore, really… but you don’t have to put on the drama for me. You don’t have to be self-destructing to knock on my door. You can just come over.”

“Oh? How often will you actually open the door for me?”

“Only one way to find out.” You sigh. “Look, it’s no galaxy idol penthouse, it’s barely got enough room for one person, as you are well aware. But if you just need somewhere to be yourself, or to be sad, or to write, then it’s an option. I’m not going to promise that it’ll always be easy or comfortable, for either of us, but if you’re going to end up here anyway, then just be honest about it.”

You see the pit trap you’ve laid for yourself. It’s not too late to swerve. But you’re still a man who follows his heart, despite everything that’s happened, aren’t you?

“I’m not always home at night. But I haven’t changed where I hide the spare key. I haven’t even changed the locks. You might still have a key.” 

“Why?”

For a moment you bristle, thinking he’s scoffing at the idea that he would have kept your key, until you realize he means why you never changed the locks. You find yourself suddenly very engrossed in a loose thread on your shirt hem. “When you were missing, I thought maybe you might try to come home.” Your voice is quiet and thick in your throat. “I thought if you couldn’t get in, you might just disappear again.” 

Your apartment felt so empty in those days. He’d snuck all his stuff out somehow before disappearing, so you didn’t even have the detritus of him around. Just a ghost.

Stop it. It didn’t matter. He was off having an extended foreign vacation on Judas’s dime. There’s nothing to be sad about anymore. Unclench your fist, untangle your fingers from the duvet. 

He watches you in silence until you’ve taken a few deep breaths. “Thank you. That was kind of you.”

Ugh. His pity feels worse than his antagonism. You clear your throat and straighten your back. “Well, anyway, I’ve been too busy to do anything about it since you came back. So you might as well take advantage of it. Just lay off the smokes or my landlord will have my ass.”

“I’ve changed my mind. I want you at Judas as my manager instead of my bandmate.”

“In that case I’ve changed my mind too. I’m calling the locksmith first thing in the morning.”

“We can double whatever they’re paying you in the cubicle factory --”

“-- Nobody uses cubicles now, it’s all open plan, Shuu have you ever even _seen_ an office --”

“-- and all you’d have to do is keep me out of trouble.”

“Hard pass. You’d just take it as a challenge and behave twice as badly.”

He laughs, unpolished and genuine, and you feel like you’re sixteen again. “You’re probably right. I do try to make people happy these days, you know. That aspect of Shuu☆Zo isn't an act. But it seems you’re still a special exception.”

“Lucky me.”

You don’t know anymore what this emotion is. Maybe you’ll never get to just feel one simple thing with him. 

“You enjoy being mad at me, don’t you?” he asks suddenly.

“You’ve never exactly given me a lot of choice.”

“That’s hardly true. You’ve gotten to feel all kinds of things about me.”

He’s certainly put you through almost the full set just tonight, and you still don’t feel any closer to understanding anything.

When you don't reply, he continues “But does it feel good? All that righteous anger. Does it keep you warm at night? There’s no room for regrets when you’re angry instead, right?”

“What kind of person do you think I am?”

He makes one of those frustrated pouts at you again. “I mean that if I disappear again someday -- if I have to go far away -- it’s okay to just be angry at me. You don’t need to be sad or worry or wait for me to come back. You can just hate me.”

 _How dare he._ After what you’ve just offered him. “Shuu, I swear to fucking god I wasn’t going to fight you tonight but you’re cruising for a punch to the face.”

“I don’t _want_ to go!” He blinks after that outburst and you see him pause and rearrange his shoulders, straighten his back, plaster his smile back over whatever it was you just saw. “But the dream galaxy is full of unforeseen possibilities, isn’t it?”

Why can’t he ever just be honest? (Are you doing any better? Would you believe him if he was? He told you so much already and you’ve been pretending he didn’t.)

“Do you hate me, Shuu?”

He looks so genuinely -- so _convincingly_ sad. “No. I told you, didn’t I?”

He did. He hasn’t said it again, but he did, that “I love you” murmured into your ear that he’s never taken back. You’ve been trying not to think about it.

What does he want from you? Why does he want you to be mad at him?

(A flicker of memory, a younger voice coming from a younger face, trading cigarettes behind school as Shuu bitched to you about some classmate or another’s breakup woes: “I’m never gonna let myself miss anyone. Giving someone else that much of a grip on your heart? That shit _hurts_. Better to hate the fucker, at least then you’re the one with the power.”)

But you don’t hate him anymore, do you?

You didn’t realize it until now. You’re frustrated with him, certainly. Disappointed. Sorry, maybe. But not mad anymore, not the way you used to be. You don't want him to go, tonight or "someday", you don't want him to disappear. You don’t want to hate him as an antidote to missing him. You want him to stay where you can be sure he's okay.

It twists in your gut. You'd really started to get used to the certainty and comfort of that anger. But everything that you loved about him is still there, somewhere; everything you gave to him is still tucked into the secret recesses of his heart. You'll never be able to just hate him and let him go.

Maybe he just wants to know that he can do it again without causing you as much pain. 

"Sorry, Shuu. I don't think I can do that."

It's an answer to a question that isn’t quite the one he asked, but he seems to get you. He gives you a look of sympathy, and maybe a little bit of hope.

"All right," he says. "I'll keep that in mind."

You both lapse into silence again, but it's a little less tense this time. "Peaceful" might still be beyond the two of you, but parallel melancholy might be a workable compromise.

You realize this is probably the longest conversation the two of you have ever had in your lives. Even when you were on better terms, you weren't really talkers. You'd never have gone this long without it descending into fighting or fucking or songwriting or some combination of the above. And you still don't know if you've learned anything about him.

"We need to sleep," you tell him once it becomes clear he's not about to blurt out any secrets. "I'll get the light."

He snuggles down in your bed, head on your pillow, and watches you with a faint smile as you reach for the light switch. You think he's going to tease you for a goodnight kiss, but he seems done with teasing for the moment. He just gazes at you, smugly comfortable, looking for all the world as if he still belongs there tucked into your bed.

You want to watch him until he falls asleep. You've pulled all nighters on plenty of work nights, you can do this easily. You just want to know that he's behaving himself, that he's gotten this burst of rebellion and self-destruction out of his system and is ready to act his age again.

(You want to slip under the duvet with him, to wrap yourself around his skinny body and sling your hand casually over his waist like you used to, to know he's asleep because you can feel the rhythm of his breath against your chest getting slower and steadier, to --)

No. You can't just give in to all your impulses. You're a grown man now. You crawl back into the futon instead.

How far you've come, how far you haven't. Neither of you can let go of the other, even though you’ve found separate lives and separate happiness. You can't deny that any longer. From the moment you first heard him sing, he crawled into your heart and there’s no getting him out now; you’ve grown around him like a tree. You just feel better knowing where he is. 

It was kind of nice to play-act your old lives for a moment, though. Just for a moment. It can't always be like this, of course, you can’t keep acting like children if you’re going to --

\-- _No_. You aren’t "going to" anything. He said it himself, the clock only moves forward. This, tonight, was just a problem to solve. That’s what you do. It doesn't mean anything else.

You set your alarm even earlier than usual to make sure he can be away in time. You know he has early mornings these days. You can’t believe this is the same man who once composed an obscene ditty about you because you had the temerity to try to get him out of bed before noon. The futon is between him and the door, so even if he wakes up before the alarm you’re bound to at least see him in passing in the morning. 

You forget how sneaky he is. He’s gone when you wake, even at this early hour. But the cup of tea he left you is still warm, so it can’t have been that long. Hopefully that means he got some sleep.

*

It’s a few months later and you’re just trying to get a coffee on your infinitesimal lunch break when you hear the new Trichronika hit on the shop radio. You fidget awkwardly as you stand in line; you’ve never really gotten the hang of tuning out his voice, despite all the practice you get. So you hear every word he sings about tucking “you” into bed and watching over “you”. 

It’s a weird feeling. You’re often present in his songs, but only as an unspecified shadowy past not to be regretted, a love sunk to the bottom of the ocean. You’ve never been incorporated into his nonthreatening idol persona like this. 

Maybe this is the most honest thanks you can hope to get from him. It’ll keep you awake better than the coffee will, that’s for sure.

If anyone catches you humming when you get back to the office, they’re polite enough not to mention it.

**Author's Note:**

> rom you dumbass he's an unspecified canid he's not swishing his tail he's wagging it
> 
> The song about tucking you in is made up for the fic, the love sunk to the bottom of the ocean line is real. Thanks Shuu


End file.
